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Japan To Develop 3D Maps For Self-Driving Cars (nikkei.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Nikkei: A joint venture in Japan will begin creating high-definition 3D maps for self-driving cars in September as part of a government effort to have such vehicles on the road by 2020, when the Tokyo Summer Olympics will be held. Tokyo-based Dynamic Map Planning, set up by Mitsubishi Electric, mapmaker Zenrin and nine automakers, will digitally chart the country's key expressways by driving a vehicle loaded with special surveying equipment. The data will be processed using computers designed for the creation of maps, which will be provided to automakers that invest in the startup. As a first step, Dynamic Map Planning will make maps covering 300km of the country's main expressways. The combination of high-resolution 3D maps and sensors will enable the accurate detection of which lane a car is in and the distance to junctions. High-precision surveying technology is required to make the maps, so Mitsubishi Electric developed equipment that will be installed on a canvassing vehicle. GPS will track the location of the car on the map, and sensors designed to detect the inclination of the car will measure the road grades. At the same time, data including the locations of road signs and traffic lights, as well as right- and left-turns and pedestrian crossings, will be collected using lasers. The survey data will be displayed as a collection of dots. Lines on the road, such as lanes, noise barriers and road signage, will be plotted on that image to faithfully re-create road conditions for 3D maps.
Flying cars, at long last!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hmmm... They might resurrect map cutting like old time GPS did. Basically, if you want to "operate" your self driving car in Tokyo - you need to buy subscription for Tokyo region 3D map. Operating without active subscription will be made illegal.
It sounds like it is just a laser scan with a point cloud, albeit on a very substantial scale. Am I missing something?
I do wonder how they factor out the other cars though...
Two HOT Japanese school girls shitting and pissing all over each other.
might be LR in 2020
While it isn't a bad place to start, what happens when things change? Expressways probably experience the least change, but everything changes. New signs get added, new changes happen all the time. It would be a nightmare to keep on top of this without the city corroborating with these changes which they aren't from the sound of it. Until they can actually automate the vehicles like humans do, able to navigate through visual cues alone without the need for a pre made map, this will remain more of a lane following and auto vehicle following assisted technology.
If an earthquake shifts an area 20 cm to the side...you will withness the traffic going "the old way".
lucky if it's just an subscription and your car can't run maps V 3.40 buy a new car!
That means people will not buy those cars in the first place. All leases or rentals or, well, Uber...
Interesting times...
When I was shooting Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift in Tokyo, in winter of 2005, I saw a rig a lot like this. I was walking down a street, and saw a van with four cameras, four LIDARs, and two GPS sensors on the top. I asked a man working on it what it was, and he said "Oh! Are you engineer?" and I confessed that I was just a movie-maker. But, nevertheless, they showed me everything in the van, and said that the point was developing 3D models of all the streets in Tokyo. At the time, it wasn't for self-driving cars though -- they wanted to build 3D in-car maps for navigation. The team of engineers was from a university in Tokyo; although I don't recall which one.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Why do they need 3D maps to determine "what lane they are in and distance to the next junction"?
You set up a program for "surveying volunteers" who will have their cars equipped with additional hardware for checking changes.
They can get a discount but they will need to connect their cars to Internet to upload data everyday and drive over xxx kilometers per month.
Maybe asking a delivery company to sign up in exchange for paying fuel can be easier and better since its drivers will be going everywhere.
Seems a rather inefficient way to track it. Wouldn't it be more efficient to do the mapping from plane?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch